As Its to Time
by Jessa L'Rynn
Summary: Being a Time Lord has advantages. There are also some major disadvantages, and Rose and the Doctor are exploring those together in this AU story about some consequences in the lives of the Last of the Time Lords. And Jack. July II challenge by Nemo Sum.
1. Chapter 1

**Nemo Sum** asked for this one for July II. I was asked to alter the events of Journey's End and make Rose end up a Time Lord. From there, years to ages later, the official couple of the Last of the Time Lords is to endure her first regeneration. Story is to take place several months to a year following. A former companion from the new series was invited, with the exception of Donna. Rating was to be no higher than a T (within Jack tolerances, if Jack was attending). The Doctor was to quote or otherwise reference Shakespeare. One of the pair must embarrass the other. Rose must remain Rose, within regeneration parameters. And I don't have to tell you how she died unless it's important.

That seems a bit like a potential novel, normally. Unfortunately, it was given to me and, as you all know, I'm a LITTLE bit mad, so there should be two chapters and I will update it probably Tuesday.

The title is from an ee cummings poem: "being to timelessness as its to time / love did no more begin than it will end..."

Hope you enjoy!

* * *

**As Its to Time**

Part 1: Outlining the Issue

Jack only noticed that his team seemed to be unnaturally quiet that afternoon when the door to the Hub opened and every alarm in the place went off. Instead of what he would have shouted twenty-five years ago, when his team was normal, he shouted, "What the hell have you done!!"

"CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS!" a loud, feminine voice bellowed from the doorway.

Jack turned white and turned toward the door of the Hub, where the tiniest Fury he had ever laid eyes on was blazing in terrific anger toward him. "Shit!" he shouted. "What have you morons done?"

Jack's three team members, Jim, Lauren, and Harvey, all appeared to look at him with hurt and puzzled expressions. "We caught an alien," Harvey commented.

"He's in the vault," Lauren added.

"We were questioning him," Jim finished, proudly.

"WHERE IS HE?!" the girl roared, and she reminded Jack of someone. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to place who exactly it was, because he felt the sudden urge to run for his life. That was decidedly odd, because, honestly, he didn't have to worry about that sort of thing.

The girl stormed up to him - that was who she reminded him of, the Oncoming Storm version of Jack's normally happy alien friend - and slapped him with all the brute force of a tiny woman who was used to being mistaken for a little kid. In other words, Jack rocked under a blow strong enough that he was sure he'd never been hit harder by anyone. "What was that for?" he whined, a hard wired response that he'd tried to break himself of, but couldn't manage.

"You need to keep your pets on a leash!" she shouted. "Where the hell have they taken him?"

"Who?" he demanded. "Who are you?"

Her hands folded across her chest and she leaned back. Reminded him of someone, dammit, but he really, really couldn't place it. She glowered at him, and then, as if omitting him from the conversation altogether, she rounded on his team. "What have you stupid apes done with my husband?" she demanded.

"Your... husband?" Harvey said. "But you're an alien!"

"Human, _please_!" she shouted, in the most familiar and exasperated tone. "You think you have the pan-dimensional patent on gender relations or something? I'll grant Jack here might have one, but you certainly don't." She eyed Harvey contemptuously, and Jack stifled a laugh because there was a little niggling impression in his head that Harvey ought to be her type.

Harvey reminded Jack of Mickey, which was one of the two reasons he'd hired the silly thing. He'd sort of hoped he could bring out the brilliant in Harvey the Idiot. Three months employment hadn't seemed to get him anywhere on that.

"Who did you catch, and why the hell didn't you tell me before his mate came for him?" Jack asked Lauren.

"We caught the _Doctor_!!" she exclaimed, proudly. "Isn't it brilliant, Jack? We're the best, aren't we? Well, I guess, we'll have to catch this one, too... Jim, get the rope."

Jack was already running. That little terror had just called him her husband and she had better be making it up because if she wasn't, he was going to murder the Doctor, plain and simple. He might be the only person in the Universe who knew it now, for all he knew, but the Doctor was already married. His wife wasn't a miniature valkyrie, either, if he remembered correctly, which he did, as he'd performed the ceremony himself.

And it had been a fiasco from the get go, that whole damn relationship. Dancing around the console, dancing around each other, dancing around the truth about their feelings, dancing around dancing. And then he'd lost her, and Jack had lost her, and then she'd come back, the harbinger of a screaming horde of Daleks and the end of the Universe.

There'd been a short, vicious war, and they'd all managed to get out alive. Donna Noble, the Doctor's companion at the time, had lost her memories, but gained a strange twin brother. Meanwhile, _she_ had emerged from the ordeal a full Time Lord.

And then there'd been more dancing. Dancing around the fact that the Doctor wanted her to stay that way more than he wanted to breathe, dancing around the fact that she had brought this on herself, dancing around her mother finding out the truth, dancing around Jack to get him to give in on his resolution that he would keep her if the Doctor wouldn't, dancing around the TARDIS trying to coax her into helping the Doctor "fix" it, dancing around the knowledge that she was supposed to have been born that way, and finally back to dancing around the console.

Eventually, they'd both given in. Jack saw them from time to time. Occasionally, it had been centuries for him, usually it had been decades for them, and they were always wrapped around each other like a paired love-knot. They were beautiful and terrible, and so painfully in love you could practically feel it in the very air of any room they stood in. Him, tall and brown and easy on the eyes, her pink and yellow and lovely enough to strike a man blind.

And now that girl upstairs, who was still beautiful enough to strike you blind, was also claiming to be the Doctor's wife. But she wasn't blonde and she wasn't pink (more a sort of ivory), and she was absolutely not Rose Tyler.

He threw himself into the vault, wrenched open the Doctor's cell and, before the Time Lord had even gotten his relieved grin in place very well, Jack threw back his fist to punch him. A tiny hand closed, strong and powerful, on Jack's wrist. "I think that's mine," she said quietly, in a voice like ringing wind chimes.

The Doctor smiled at her, a fond, tender smile, the one he had always reserved just for Rose. Jack still wanted to hit him.

"I thought I'd lost you," she said softly.

"You're stuck with me," he answered, and reached for her. With an anxious, wretched sob, she threw herself at the Doctor and he enfolded her in his embrace, meeting Jack's eyes gravely over the top of her head.

"What the hell is going on?" Jack mouthed at him.

"Like I know!" the Doctor mouthed back.

"What have I told you about wandering off?" the girl demanded.

"You caught them both, Jack!" exclaimed Lauren, enthusiastically, from behind him. "Oh, that's just brilliant!"

Jack suddenly wondered if his entire team's IQ put together was even as high as his shoe size. "No, I didn't. Get back upstairs before I retcon the lot of you and leave you in Miami or something."

"But..." said Harvey.

The Doctor looked up at the Torchwood team, his positively ancient eyes blazing with all the power and the righteous fury of the Storm in full thunder. They scampered.

"Sorry," said Jack. "It's impossible to get good help, these days."

The girl snorted. "Good help? Jack, they're absolutely stupid. How'd they catch you anyway?" she asked the Doctor. He mumbled something into her hair, and refused to detach himself from her. "You what?" she demanded, trying to pull away from him.

"I wasn't looking where I was going," he muttered, his face turning a delicate, rueful sort of pink. Jack thought the look suited him.

"What were you doing?" she demanded. "Looking for bananas?"

"For a place to hide one, more like," Jack muttered. The Doctor shot him an exasperated glare, obviously catching the innuendo.

The girl giggled and turned to him, but still with the Doctor's arm around her narrow shoulders. "You haven't changed a bit," she said softly, gently. "You never do. I'm sorry I hit you."

He snorted. "Who are you?" he asked.

She stared at him in disbelief. "Immortal, _please_!" she exclaimed.

The Doctor chuckled. "Works on Jack, too, humm?"

"Time Lord, please," she said, and held up a hand in a gesture of disdain.

The Doctor rolled his eyes, a sparkle of mischief in their dark depths. "Absolutely," he murmured.

The girl blushed a vivid crimson this time. "Stop that," she said.

Jack couldn't help himself laughing a bit. They were just like Rose and the Doctor had always been, teasing and flirting and joking. Wait. "Rose?" he demanded.

"Took ya long enough!" she exclaimed. "God, your team are rubbing off on you or something." She looked adorably startled at a sudden thought. "Please tell me you're not shagging any of that lot, Jack, you can do so much..." her hand flew up over her mouth and she turned to the Doctor, her golden eyes huge. "Sorry, sorry!" she said. "Didn't mean to say anything like that, sorry."

"Rose, wait!" the Doctor yelped, but she was gone, out the door, slamming the vault door behind her as she went.

"What the hell was that?" Jack asked.

"My fault," the Doctor said, and crumpled to the seat in his cell. "Just shut the door and leave me here, I don't care."

"What??"

"She died, Jack, as you might have noticed."

"Yeah, I kinda figured. But she's obviously still in love with you. She came storming in here like... well, like you."

"Yes, I know." He tapped at his head. "She died and it was something stupid, something her Time Lord physiology is perfectly capable of handling, if she'd only known. I almost lost her, Jack, and it scared the hell out of me."

"I'm with you, so far," Jack agreed. "It would have scared me, too."

The Doctor pulled the sonic screwdriver from an inside pocket and flicked it at the CCTV cameras. Jack thought he could hear the howls of anguish from upstairs. "Why didn't you just leave if you had that?" he asked.

"Didn't know where you were, and they seemed mostly harmless. I didn't want to hurt them unless I had no choice. They didn't take her, after all."

Jack nodded and shuddered. If they'd taken Rose... well, he'd've probably found them in the cells, if they were lucky. He was starting to think he'd be lucky if they all three just took a long walk off the pier into the Bay. He really couldn't wait 'til Gwen's daughter's kids were grown. He was starting to hate this place again.

"This was about eight months ago, linear time. Six months, eight months. Whatever. But I messed up. I panicked. The second she woke up, I sat her down and spent a week going over everything there is to know about Time Lords. And you know how I get when I get to talking, and you know how she gets, when she gets to listening and well, that hasn't changed, she's brilliant, Rose, and so clever, and I really do like her new persona and everything, not much different, more like a normal regeneration, not this crazy variety show I've done over the centuries and..."

"So she found out what?" Jack interrupted. The age of their friendship was the only reason the Doctor talked to him, he knew that. Well, the Doctor had blamed the marriage ceremony for it, because Jack had given the charge that everyone present was to help the new couple. He'd claimed, the first time he sat down in front of Jack with a head full of ideas and the urge to talk them out, that Jack had brought it on himself. Jack didn't mind, enjoyed it, in fact, but he'd had to learn early how to stem the flow of distraction words.

"I told her absolutely everything. And she's gotten this idea into her head that I expect proper Time Lord behavior out of her or something. She's shut so many doors in her head that what she's really thinking and feeling is a maze I can't get to, never mind through, and I just don't know! WHAT! TO DO!!" The Doctor's hands shot through his hair, creating a chaotic disarray of what had been a completely neat arrangement. Which, come to think of it, was odd.

"What have you done?" Jack asked.

"Lots of things. Everything. Everything from romantic dates to trying to act like she thinks I think she should. I even combed my hair this morning, did you see?"

"Yes, I noticed," Jack agreed. "And that's what's wrong?"

"Every thing's wrong from it. She doesn't trust me anymore, I don't think. I can't trust her, because she won't tell me what she's thinking and won't let me see either, and any time I get close enough to her - like just now - she pulls away and runs like hell. My Rose is still in there, I know she is, we both just saw her, but she's trying to be a Time Lord, and they're all dead and she's supposed to act like her, not them!"

Jack frowned and nodded, a plan beginning to formulate in the back of his mind. "How far are you willing to take this?" he asked the Doctor.

The Time Lord stared at him, stared into him, dark eyes hurt and blazing. "Even to the edge of doom," he pronounced.

Jack grinned. "Good," he said. "Then trust me."

"With her life," the Doctor agreed.

Much more imperative than trusting him with the Doctor's own life, and they both knew it. Jack nodded and, just because it was important, completed the gesture Rose had stopped him from earlier. As the Doctor slumped, unconscious, to the floor of the cell, Jack smiled. "That's for not calling me sooner," he said.

He pulled out his small cell phone and dialed the number of an old friend. "Gwen?" he said. He listened to her precious, familiar voice and grinned. "Oh, she's there, good. What's she doing?"

He smiled. "Yeah, she would be looking a bit panicked at the moment. Tell her every thing's fine, honest, he just doesn't know where to find her. Give her some tea, that'll calm her down. No, don't tell her it's me. Blame Rhys, I don't care. But listen, I have to go send the losers out on a wild goose chase and then I'm going to call you."

They talked for a few more minutes, and then Jack hung up. He reached into the Doctor's pocket, stole his sonic screwdriver, and used it to seal the Time Lord in. Then, whistling Dixie quite happily to himself, he went upstairs and ordered the three stooges off to find something that didn't exist in a place that didn't exist.

"Good luck," he told them gravely, as he bundled them off into the SUV. They nodded, thinking they were off to save the world without him, and as soon as they pulled away, he collapsed, chortling merrily.


	2. Chapter 2

**Nemo Sum** asked for this one for July II. I was asked to alter the events of Journey's End and make Rose end up a Time Lord. From there, years to ages later, the official couple of the Last of the Time Lords is to endure her first regeneration. Story is to take place several months to a year following. A former companion from the new series was invited, with the exception of Donna. Rating was to be no higher than a T (within Jack tolerances, if Jack was attending). The Doctor was to quote or otherwise reference Shakespeare. One of the pair must embarrass the other. Rose must remain Rose, within regeneration parameters. And I don't have to tell you how she died unless it's important.

That seems a bit like a potential novel, normally. Unfortunately, it was given to me and, as you all know, I'm a LITTLE bit mad.

Hope you enjoy!

_PS: In answer to the most prevalent question. In strictly linear terms, as the chronometer flies, it's been approximately fifty Earth years since the events of Journey's End. For the Doctor, Rose, and Jack, it's been a bit longer, much longer, in fact. For Rose and the Doctor, around three centuries have passed. For Jack, given some of the things that have happened to him, it's been almost five hundred years._

* * *

**As Its to Time**

_Part Two: Yesterday for Tomorrow_

"So what's your brilliant plan to make us talk?" the Doctor asked as Jack led him into his office.

"Strip," Jack ordered, apparently ignoring him.

"No," said the Doctor, calmly. "You strip."

"Honey, if this was about me, I would, but it still isn't. Get your clothes off, now."

"Never happening. And besides, how's that going to help Rose and I talk things out?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "I'm not sure if you've noticed this, Doctor, but you're the Doctor."

"Ah. Finally cottoned on, have you?" the Doctor said sarcastically.

Jack ignored the flippancy, rummaging through his desk drawer instead. "And I'm not sure if anyone ever told you, but you can talk for a solid week without ever saying anything."

The Doctor tugged at his ear thoughfully. "Donna might've mentioned it, yeah."

"Clever girl, our Donna," Jack said. "Problem is, Rose can listen to you talk for weeks on end without doing anything more about it than asking an insightful question or two. I've watched her at it since she was nineteen years old."

"So you're saying what?" the Doctor asked.

"'Talking it out' isn't gonna work for you two, it just isn't. So I brought these."

The Doctor sighed. "Put the handcuffs away, Jack, it isn't going to happen."

"Sure it is. My room's free for your use. I even changed my sheets."

"No."

"You'll ruin the plan if you don't cooperate," Jack said.

The Doctor sighed. It wasn't that there was no appeal in Jack's so-called plan, it was just that it wouldn't work. Still, he did have a point or two. The Doctor sat down in the chair across from Jack's and tried to think of some sort of embellishment that might make the plan stand at least a Scintillion's chance in Brisbane of actually doing any good.

Then, all at once, he got the strangest sensation. "Jack," he said, "all the hairs on my manly hairy hand just stood up."

"Dunno if I'd call them... uh oh."

"You feel it, too?"

"Yes," said Jack, his green eyes huge with worry. "Run!"

Too late.

There was a blinding flash of white light.

* * *

Rose felt it, and couldn't help the scream that erupted from her lips as the time lines abruptly shifted.

Gwen was at her side in an instant. "What's happened, dear?" she asked softly.

Rose looked into the aged face of her dear friend and shook her head. "I don't know, yet," she whispered. "But I have to go find out."

"Where are you going?"

"The Hub first, and then, I'm going to get my husband back." Her hands trembled with something very like fury.

She stalked for the door and Gwen smiled at her. "Come see us soon," she said. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Rose allowed, bitterly. "Whoever's taken him will need it."

* * *

"Where are we?" Jack asked, glancing around at the deserted streets.

"Not sure," the Doctor answered, "and that's usually a very, very bad thing."

"Superseded only by times when we DO know where we are."

"Shut it, you," the Doctor commanded, and looked around.

There was a wailing siren.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding," said Jack.

The Doctor was reading a notice on a nearby wall when Jack snatched his arm and dragged him into the closest stable looking structure. The two of them collapsed against the wall to breathe heavily for a minute and then began searching for a way to get under cover.

"The effing London Blitz!" Jack shouted over the sirens.

"Again," the Doctor agreed.

"If someone calls for anyone's mummy," Jack said, "I'm going to die on the spot."

"Where's my sonic screwdriver?" the Doctor asked, realizing that a paradox was going to be harder to avoid than he thought.

"In my coat," Jack said. "Which is, of course..."

"Back in your stupid office." The Doctor rolled his eyes.

"Oh, hell," Jack muttered. "You know, sometimes, I hate that Rift."

The Doctor sighed. "You think you've got problems? What about me running into the Storm King?"

Jack stomped around and kicked things and muttered. "Not immortal out there, and I can't stop him; I wouldn't miss it for the world, but sometimes..."

"Don't worry, Jack," the Doctor consoled, "Rose'll be here soon."

"How do you know?" Jack demanded, frantically. "We may have to do nearly two centuries before we catch up to her."

The Doctor shook his head. "Doesn't work like that," he said. "There's two things you don't get between. Mums and their children, and Time Lords and their partners. Between her and the TARDIS, they'll find me."

Jack ignored all of that in favor of making fun of him, since there really didn't seem to be a better way to handle any of this right now. "The TARDIS thinks you're her kid?"

The Doctor smacked the back of his head and they both got to work looking for a cellar.

* * *

Rose stared at the TARDIS console, hands still shaking. There was a potential paradox outside the door, a huge one, and she didn't have the technical data to avoid the thing unless it was more careful than she was. Nevertheless, she had to find the Doctor.

Somewhere, out there, hanging above London, was a very young and very confused human girl. Before the day was out, she would have three pieces of information she never had before, but only one would register on her addled young mind immediately. She also would have Jack, and how you described him in your head, she still didn't know, even with the entire vocabulary of the hundreds of languages available to her.

Well, there was no sense waiting until they got turned into gas-mask zombies. She opened the doors and went out into the inky and dangerous night.

The TARDIS phone was ringing but she ignored it. About a block away, the other TARDIS phone was also ringing, and the Doctor was complaining at it. She could hear that Northern accent ranting away and had to resist the nearly overwhelming urge to go after him. She had the current model to chase down, after all, and her first Doctor wouldn't know her from Adam's house cat. Although, to make matters potentially worse, she might register as a Time Lord to him, which would be very, very bad since, as far as he knew, there weren't any. She threw up every single barrier she had ever been taught to create.

She pulled out the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. For some reason, it had been in Jack's coat pocket, which wasn't on Jack's person, when the Rift had snatched them away. "See," she muttered, waving the screwdriver back toward the Time Lord she couldn't go talk to, "Spock."

She picked up the Chula tech and narrowed the parameters to exclude it. She picked up the two TARDISes. Didn't need them, either, she knew where they were. She picked up the younger Doctor. Sorta needed to know where he was, good point, as she had to avoid him. Then, she got it, the odd blip that registered the screaming anomaly that was Captain Jack Harkness, Fact. Nearly drowned by the louder signal, was Rose's own paradoxical Doctor.

She smiled to herself, memorized the signal, and went to track it down. She paused every few steps to make sure she did nothing to attract the attention of dark and stormy Doctor Nine.

She was half a mile away from the TARDIS before it occurred to her. There were three things that she'd learned that day. One, the obvious one, was that the Doctor danced, in both senses of the word (even if she had only got one sense of it that day). The other two though...

He was very intriguingly jealous of Jack and her sudden interest in Jack. That was one and it had been interesting.

He was a nine hundred year old alien and had been marvelously insulted at the idea that a nineteen year old shopgirl didn't consider him a candidate for any sort of dancing. That was it. The sudden knowledge, which she'd almost immediately forgotten, that, although the Doctor would go down fighting it to his last breath, he wanted her.

That wasn't a proper Time Lord thing at all.

Rose smiled.

* * *

"If I told you the number of times I've ended up in the Blitz, you'd probably murder me," Jack said, as he and the Doctor found a couple of packing crates to sit on and sulk.

"Why bother?" the Doctor asked, morosely.

"What's on your mind?" Jack asked. "You're certainly in a foul temper."

"Just thinking. There's a massive, tangled nexus out there. This is the worst possible place your Rift could have brought us."

"Thing that shocks me is we've hardly had any activity out of it in thirty years, and certainly nothing like this. It's almost like it was waiting for you."

"I had just reached that conclusion myself," agreed the Doctor, "and I don't have to like it. But there's a meeting scheduled to take place in the Albion Hospital, and I tend to prefer it if nothing interferes with that."

"You just don't want anything to interrupt your dance," Jack teased mildly.

The Doctor snorted. "You handled that nicely all on your own, thanks," he said. Then, he sighed, and his face got all wistful and distant. "She was so beautiful, Jack. She still is, you know. I thought, all the way back then, that she got more beautiful every day, and I've yet to be proven wrong."

"I'm in complete agreement, there," Jack said softly.

"You know, I don't think she even realized I was a male of any species until the conversation we had that night."

"Thought you were talking about dancing," Jack teased.

"In a way," the Doctor agreed. It was obvious to Jack, from the strange look in his eye, from the slow, uncharacteristic cadence of his voice, that the Doctor's mind was somewhere else, across London, looking back at this pivotal moment that changed all three of their lives, permanently. "She asked me if the Universe would implode if I danced, and then she bullied me into it."

"Did it?" Jack asked, smirking a little at the thought.

"What?"

"Did the Universe implode?" Jack asked.

"Not much," the Doctor said. "Well, a little, of course. Doing impossible things tends to make it wobbly, anyway. And, at the time, me dancing with Rose Tyler was about as impossible as it gets. Feels like that's what I've been doing half my life, now. Trying to do impossible things to get through to Rose Tyler. It was so simple, back then, and it seemed like I was pushing a rock up a mountain. You're the only person I know who can understand this - falling in love with someone when you know you'll lose them to time."

He jerked his hands through his hair and sighed. "It'll always be like this, I guess. Losing her forever, because she's always just out of reach."

Jack looked up and spotted Rose's shadow, frozen on the staircase. He wondered how long she'd been there, how much she'd heard. At a guess, he would have to assume that Rose was shielding herself from the other Doctor, the younger Doctor who couldn't know she existed, and therefore the older Doctor couldn't sense her, either. "What would you do if you could have her back?" Jack asked.

"What ever she wanted," the Doctor said.

There was a jangling, chiming, soft noise from the staircase and the Doctor looked up, a weary, broken smile on his face, like Jack hadn't seen there since before Rose returned. He answered in the same language and Jack felt a bit like he didn't exist. He didn't care.

Tiny and full of trepidation, Rose moved toward the Doctor. Like a sleepwalker with no idea what was going on, the Doctor stepped toward her as well. Jack sat back and smiled lazily. Rose handed the Doctor his screwdriver. The Doctor smiled and lifted it, pressed a button and the TARDIS materialized behind them. Rose grinned.

Jack stepped inside, looking fondly at the familiar gold coral and blue-green lights. He smiled and stroked the console and the music began.

* * *

"What do _you_ want?" Rose asked him.

"Just you," the Doctor answered, all the honesty and all the absolutes he could convey in those short concept-words. _Just you, only you, always you, my Rose, just yourself, as you are and would and will be, nothing more, nothing less._

Walls began to crumble. He felt them giving way as she handed him the screwdriver. He summoned the TARDIS as the doors she'd closed between them began to open themselves up to him. He gave in to the wonder of it, his Rose, unfurling like the flower that gave her her name, blooming once again, in every corner of his hearts and his mind.

They stepped inside the TARDIS, time and regrets and secrets all falling away between them. The TARDIS would protect the paradox, and everything else was just the two of them. Jack set the coordinates, the TARDIS dematerialized, and two Time Lords, who would never be proper Time Lords, either one of them, wrapped their arms around each other and danced.

* * *

Jack sat alone in the console room, watching the Time Rotor rise and fall. "Funny, the things a trip down memory lane can accomplish," he commented wryly.

A bottle of very old bourbon and a single glass appeared on a small table next to his hand. "Thanks," he said, and poured himself a drink. "But that's not going to get you out of this one."

The console lights blinked at him, a pattern that looked, to Jack, to be decidedly sheepish.

"Have you always been able to manipulate the Rift?" he asked her.

The lights now flashed guiltily at him.

He chuckled. "Drink?" he offered.

A star-spun woman of light and shadows materialized beside him and smiled at him. "Why not?" she said.

A second glass appeared, so Jack poured her a drink. She raised it to him in silent salute. He took a sip, and thought for a moment. "To love that's like time," he said.

She clicked her glass to his in solemn, joyful agreement. "Endless."


End file.
